


(im)patience

by sugarplumfairy



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Cunnilingus, F/M, No betas we die like Glenn, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Reunion Sex, Vaginal Sex, fuckin in the goddess tower what can i say, sappy like REALLY sappy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-02-23 08:30:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23008630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarplumfairy/pseuds/sugarplumfairy
Summary: Seteth never got the chance to take his time. Now he's done being patient.
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Seteth
Comments: 6
Kudos: 226





	(im)patience

**Author's Note:**

> "I heard Seteth fucked the professor in the Goddess Tower!" - Sylvain, probably
> 
> im so obsessed with this fucking GOOD DAD

“I am in love with you,” he’d said. “But I do not want to act too hastily.”

“You never do anything too hastily,” she’d said. “And that’s all right. Take your time.”

He could not have known. He _could not_ have known, he tells himself. 

She’d given him time to make peace with the old wounds in his heart, but those wounds were not the reason that he had waited.

In truth, he’d forgotten how quickly mortals move, how fast they fall in love. He had wanted to savor her, make her last longer than a mere moment in his ancient existence.

Perhaps this was the goddess’s punishment for his greed.

Perhaps it was a kindness that he’d kept his distance, he’d often thought during those five years, that the memory of Byleth stumbling into that dark chasm wouldn’t haunt him like the image of his wife’s lifeless face, frozen in pain.

The memory still makes his heart drop into his gut – her green eyes wide in panic, hands reaching out to find purchase on nothing. He’d been so far away, but could’ve sworn that her eyes locked on his for just a moment before she dropped out of view.

That memory _doesn’t_ haunt him, he reminds himself.

And although the missive he’d received claimed that she is here, he still doesn’t dare to hope. From the outside, Garreg Mach Monastery looks the same, albeit far quieter. Some of the exterior walls are green with lichens that would usually be scrubbed away by the garden staff. Without the bustle of the market within the front gates, the fortress stands silent, as if in a deep slumber.

Flayn’s mare sidles up alongside him. “Brother, do you truly think she survived?” she asks, voicing his thoughts aloud.

Seteth releases a long sigh, at once both proud of and perplexed by her perceptiveness. “You and I have witnessed stranger occurrences,” he says. His eyes are inexplicably drawn towards the long spire of the Goddess Tower, and he tells himself that the warm feeling in his chest isn’t hope. “But I truly believe that she did.”

They were greeted by Gilbert, then the rest of Byleth’s class, and caught a glimpse of the Blaiddyd heir in the shadows of the torchlight, an imposing and dark figure in his thick pelt cape. Seteth warns Flayn to keep her distance, to which she protests hotly. Teenagers.

Byleth is nowhere to be seen, although everyone gathered confirms her presence within the monastery. Despite their words, Seteth can’t help but feel like the victim of an elaborate prank. He’s anxious to search for her, and Gilbert gives him a knowing look.

“You’ve had a long journey, Seteth,” he says. “We should allow you to retire for the evening.”

Seteth nods, and tries to subtly convey how deep his gratitude is. “Indeed it has. We will have more time to discuss come morning.”

Flayn huffs, indignant. “Brother, the sun is hardly even set! You cannot speak for the both of us—”

“—You can stay, Flayn,” he says, and only realizes after it’s been said how out of character it is. His face starts to flush and he scrambles for an excuse. “I am sure you wish to converse further with your former classmates.”

He tries to ignore the incredulous stares from the group and stiffly walks away. Subtle, indeed. He must be crazy.

His footsteps echo through the ruined cathedral as the last of the sunlight filters through crumbled walls and dusty stained glass. He tries to still his heart, although he feels it start to race against his bidding.

She’s here, and he knows that she’s here but he just can’t wrap his mind around it.

Five years. Just an instant to someone such as him, yet somehow an eternity. It would still be an eternity to someone such as her, and he can’t help but stupidly wonder if she’d thought of him as often as he’d thought of her. If she hears their final conversation on endless repeat, as he does.

 _You never do anything too hastily,_ she’d said.

 _Take your time,_ she’d said.

It was a harsh lesson, and one that he is determined to take to heart. No more waiting.

Mindless, his legs take him beyond the cathedral walls and out on the rampart to the Goddess Tower. And then they root him to the spot, because across the way Byleth descends the steps onto the balustrade and stops short when her eyes flick up to meet his and grow wide with surprise.

Her lips move, silent, but he discerns his name amid them – _Seteth_ – and before he can even think to restrain himself he finds himself running across the rampart, recklessly skirting the corner to the balustrade. Byleth finds her legs and crosses the final few steps to meet him in a hug.

Seteth holds her as tight as he dares, and allows her presence to overwhelm him. The warmth of her body, the faint herbal scent of her hair, her breath on his neck and shoulder. He presses his forehead into her collar, and tries to hold back a sob but her hand rubs circles on his back and the dam breaks.

Byleth laughs softly and pulls back, wipes his tears with the sleeve of her coat, and Seteth feels like the wind’s been knocked out of him.

She’s exactly the same as he remembers, with her faint and serene smile, her pale green eyes a little misty. Her façade cracks and she sighs out a laugh-sob, reaches up to hold his face in her hands.

“Shh, it’s okay, Seteth,” she says, and brushes another tear away with her thumb. “I’m here.”

“I know,” he says, choked. “That is the precise reason why I am not ‘okay.’”

Byleth searches his face, like she’s committing it to memory. “You big softie.”

Then she pulls him down to her level and kisses him. His response is hungry, desperate, and soon it’s a game of hands and tongues and teeth and five years of want.

Seteth’s hand brushes against the bare part of her midriff and his fingers seek upwards, upwards. She pulls away to catch her breath and her hand finds his, intertwines their fingers.

“I thought you wanted to wait and bed me properly,” she says, but the tone of her voice is teasing.

“I’m done waiting.” All of his nerves are on fire, and he can’t delay another moment. Either out of desire, or out of fear that his chance might elude him again, he can’t afford patience any longer.

He kisses her like a man starved, slides his hand around her waist to bring her closer, and she guides them back towards the entrance to the tower. Their joined progress is too slow for her liking, so she breaks the kiss and takes him by the hand.

Seteth looks up at the shadowed face of the tower and breathes out a shallow laugh as Byleth leads him beyond the threshold.

“I feel like a teenager,” he says, “having a clandestine rendezvous in the Goddess Tower.”

It’s dark inside, the sun having slipped beneath the level of the windows. Byleth lights a brazier with a spark of magic, which casts the chamber in a warm fireglow. The door barely has time to close before they’re on each other again, fingers fumbling with buckles and buttons, until hands find bare skin.

Byleth’s touch sends fire through his veins, every skim of her fingertips on his bare torso a reminder of how many layers are still between them. The moment of separation that it takes for him to pry off her armored plate is agony, but the view that awaits him beneath is worth it.

Seteth presses an open-mouthed kiss to her collarbone, smears his lips lower, lower to the space between her breasts. He’s rewarded with a quiet gasp when his teeth graze the soft flesh of her breast, a hand in his hair when he bites in earnest, kneads the other with a calloused hand.

Neither of them realize how far they’d traveled until Byleth’s back hits the stone wall and arches away from the cold masonry. Immediately, Seteth pulls away.

“S-sorry,” he says, but Byleth’s hands are back on him in an instant.

“Don’t ever apologize,” she says. Her usual neutral expression conveys her sincerity, but the way she cards her fingers through the emerald hair under his navel says that she wants more.

She slips a hand beneath the waistband of his trousers and finds him hard in her grasp. He shudders at the contact and helps her pull them down to around his ankles. He allows himself a little pride in the fact that she looks. And keeps looking.

He never partook in the dick-measuring games of insecure young men, even in the long-gone days of his youth, but the sound Byleth makes as she slides her hand up the shaft that fits comfortably in her palm can only be described as appreciative. The sound Seteth makes is far less dignified. She starts to drop to her knees, but Seteth stops her.

She looks up at him, curious and confused.

“Please,” he says, and the word struggles to get out. “Allow me to indulge in you right now. There will be time for that later.”

A smile melts across her face, and it has more emotion than he’s used to seeing from her. It’s wistful and flattered and excited and soft all at once.

There _will_ be time _,_ Seteth hopes, and if this is indeed their only chance he still, selfishly, wants to savor her.

“All right,” she says, and when his hands search for the edge of her shorts she obliges, pulls all three layers off at once and opens herself to him.

“I apologize in advance,” he says, and remembers Byleth’s reprimand only after he does. “It has been a long, long time since I’ve done this.”

Byleth stretches to kiss his cheek. “If it’s you, Seteth, it will be perfect no matter what.”

It’s instinct, pure instinct that draws Seteth’s fingers to the space between her legs, drags them through slick folds and pushes them into her tight, hot entrance one at a time. Byleth’s thighs squeeze together out of the same instinct, but once Seteth pries them apart she falls open for him.

Once he’s satisfied that his fingers are wet enough he eases two into her, coaxes her through the stretch until they slide easily. He plunges into her, up to the knuckle, and she bites back a moan, grips his forearm hard enough to bruise.

“Seteth…” she breathes, just barely a whisper but an admission that makes his head spin.

He lowers onto one knee, and then the other, leans forward until his nose brushes the pale green hair at the apex of her thighs.

“Say that again,” he pleads, and then he devours her.

It’s hard not to oblige when his tongue lights her on fire, drags over her clit while his fingers work her open. Her hands find a home in his hair, mindlessly pull him closer because she can’t get enough.

“Seteth, Seteth, Seteth—” His name falls like a prayer from her lips, a plea and a petition for _more_ that he is happy to provide.

He’s lost in her, drowning with no desire to come back up for air. Every moan, every pleasured shiver, drags him deeper. He looks up from his work to watch her writhe above him, a high flush on her cheeks and her ecstasy plain on her face.

He would gladly let her be the death of him.

It’s so much, too much, the taste and the sound and the sight of her, and he brings his other hand down to relieve some of the ache that’s building far too fast. Byleth tugs him away from her and when he looks up at her he’s sure that he must look dazed and wrecked already.

“Don’t take your own pleasure, Seteth,” she says, her voice husky from overuse. “Let me do that.”

She guides him to sit, and Seteth doesn’t even notice the cold floor as she lowers herself to straddle his waist. She doesn’t take him right away, rolls her hips against him and kisses him deeply. She’s reluctant to let go when Seteth pulls her away and draws a shaky breath.

“Byleth, please,” he whispers, moans when she grinds down on him again.

“Please what?” Her eyes are blown wide, trained intently on his face.

“Please… please, take me.” He says it with some difficulty, his face flushed with a mixture of embarrassment and arousal, and perhaps one begets the other.

Byleth smooths the hair off his forehead and lifts his chin with her finger. “No, use that dirty mouth of yours.”

Seteth’s flush goes deeper as he realizes what Byleth wants from him. He swallows hard as shame makes his heart race faster, and he has to avert his eyes when he says it.

“Please fuck me, Byleth.”

Her glorious smile shows itself again, only for it to melt into a moan as she sinks down onto him. He leans forward to kiss her, let her swallow his own sounds as she takes him deeper, deeper, until they’re flush against each other.

She’s warm, and slick, and perfect, and once she starts to move all he can do is hold on and try to chase his pleasure. His hand finds a breast, her lips find his neck, and his teeth find her earlobe as she sets a desperate pace that he meets with equal fervor.

It builds too quickly, and he doesn’t want it to end, but when she comes with a gasp and holds him tighter he can’t stop from falling off the edge.

Even that doesn’t last as long as he wishes, and once the pleasure subsides he wants more, more than he can either take or give. Soft lips mouth at his shoulder, and he realizes that his eyes are still shut.

He slowly blinks open, vision blurred for a second before he can focus on Byleth’s still-naked form, pale in the combination of moonlight and torchlight. He takes a moment to catch his breath. Then more than a moment. Goddess, it’s been a long time.

He finds enough strength to run his fingers through her hair, another reminder that she’s _there._ She’s _alive._ She’s _real._

As if sensing his thoughts, she nuzzles further into his chest and locks her hands behind his back. She pulls in a deep breath of him and releases it in a rush. Seteth doesn’t know how to phrase the question he wants to ask.

“Was that… all right?” Seteth asks, finally.

Byleth’s laugh rumbles over his skin. “I told you it would be perfect, Seteth. And it was.”

He rubs his hands up her arms, over her back, just to convince himself that she’s still there.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

It’s not something that he can name, really. It still feels like he’s in a dream, and that he’ll wake up alone in a war-ravaged world, and that this hope he’d allowed himself to have will be ripped from him. It all happened too easily, too quickly, too perfectly for this to be his reality.

He tries to find a way to put this in as many words, and finally says, “This still doesn’t feel real.”

Byleth lifts her head to look at him, a slight frown on her face.

“If this is a dream, I do not ever want to wake up,” he continues. It almost hurts to hold her gaze, for all the pressure in his chest that rises with it. “If this is a dream, I pray the goddess would show me the mercy to leave me here.”

She brushes the back of her hand against his cheek. “This is no dream, but I can still show you that mercy.”

When she kisses him again he does his best to savor her taste, her scent, her touch. It might not feel real yet, but he’s content to let this be his reminder, as often as he needs.


End file.
